Annotated Text: A Formal Email

A formal Norwegian email is one of the best places to watch the language's "flat formality" in action. There is no special polite pronoun doing the heavy lifting — the recipient is still du — so politeness and distance have to be built out of word choice, complete sentences, and a handful of fixed formulae instead. Below is a realistic formal email: a customer complaining to a company about a delayed and damaged delivery. Read it whole with the glosses, then work through the register markers that make it formal.

The email

This reads as completely correct, businesslike Norwegian. Notice what is not there: no "Dear Sir or Madam," no flattery, no elaborate apologies for taking up the reader's time. Norwegian formal writing is lean. Now the details.

The greeting: Hei is formal enough

The email opens with a bare Hei, — and that is genuinely appropriate in a formal complaint to a company. This surprises English speakers, who expect a formal email to open with something like "Dear Sir/Madam." Norwegian has no everyday equivalent of that phrase; the closest, Kjære ("Dear"), is reserved for letters to a named, known person or for warmth, and sounds odd at the top of a complaint to a faceless company.

Your realistic choices at the top of a formal email are:

• Hei, — neutral, professional, by far the most common today.
• Hei [navn], — if you know the person's name (Hei Jon,).
• God dag, — a notch more formal/old-fashioned, fine in very official correspondence.

The recipient is still du (and dere)

This is the single most important point on the page. Even in a formal complaint, Anne addresses the company as dere ("you," plural) — Jeg lurer på om *dere kan opplyse…, Kunne **dere bekrefte… — and a one-person recipient would be *du. There is no switch to a "polite you." Modern Norwegian formality does not live in the pronoun. See register/du-universal.

The old De — recognise it, almost never use it

There exists an old polite pronoun De (capitalised, with object form Dem and possessive Deres), historically used to address a single person with respect. You will meet it in very old letters, in royal address, and very occasionally in deliberately old-fashioned official correspondence. For practical purposes you should not use it — to most Norwegians under sixty it sounds stiff, ironic, or even slightly absurd in an everyday email. Reaching for De is the classic English-speaker error: it feels like the "polite vous/Sie" you expect from other European languages, but Norwegian abandoned it. Recognise it, then choose du/dere. See register/du-universal.

Where the formality actually lives

If not in the pronoun, then where? In three places: lexical choices, complete grammar, and fixed formulae.

1. Formal vocabulary and connectors

Formal emails swap everyday words for heavier, often Latinate or compound ones, and they glue sentences together with discourse connectors. Compare the informal and formal versions of the same idea:

• kjøp → bestilling ("order"), sende → forsendelse ("shipment / consignment")
• penger tilbake → refusjon ("refund"), ny vare → erstatningsvare ("replacement item")
• og så → videre ("furthermore"), men → imidlertid ("however")

The email uses Videre vil jeg gjerne be om… ("Furthermore, I would like to request…") to advance the argument. These connectors — videre, imidlertid, dessuten, følgelig — are markers of careful written register. See discourse/connectors.

2. Vedrørende / angående — "regarding"

Norwegian has two near-synonymous "regarding" words that flag a formal topic, typically in subject lines and openings:

• vedrørende (often abbreviated vedr. or vr.) — "regarding, concerning"
• angående (ang.) — "regarding, concerning" (a touch more conversational than vedrørende)

The subject line here reads Klage vedrørende ordre nr. 48213. In an informal email you would just write Klage på ordre 48213 with the everyday preposition på; vedrørende raises the register.

3. The polite conditional: Jeg lurer på om… / Kunne dere…

This is the heart of Norwegian email politeness. Rather than issuing bare commands, the writer softens requests with modal and conditional framing:

• Jeg lurer på om dere kan… — "I am wondering whether you can…" The verb lurer på ("wonder") plus the indirect question om ("whether") turns a demand into a tentative query.
• Kunne dere bekrefte…? — "Could you confirm…?" The past-tense modal kunne (literally "could") is not about past time here; it is the conditional politeness use, exactly like English "could." The plain present Kan dere bekrefte…? would be perfectly grammatical but blunter.
• Jeg vil gjerne be om… — "I would like to request…" The little word gjerne ("gladly / would like to") is what makes vil ("want") polite rather than demanding. Jeg vil ha… ("I want…") alone sounds curt; Jeg vil gjerne… is courteous.
• Jeg skulle gjerne… — "I should very much like to…" Even softer: the conditional skulle
  • gjerne is the gentlest register, common when you are asking a favour.

The s-passive: depersonalising the action

Formal Norwegian loves the s-passive — a passive formed by adding -s to the infinitive — because it lets the writer talk about what was done without naming who did it, which sounds objective and official. The email's subject-and-body style leans on it, and a reply from the company would be saturated with it. Compare:

• Active, personal: Vi sender en bekreftelse. ("We send a confirmation.")
• s-passive, impersonal: En bekreftelse sendes. ("A confirmation is sent / will be sent.")

The s-passive is most natural in the present tense and for general, rule-like, or procedural statements. For a single completed past event you would more often use the bli-passive (ble levert — "was delivered"), which is exactly what the email uses in the body: Varen ble levert ti dager for sent. So both passives coexist: ble + past participle for a concrete past event, the -s form for standing procedure. See verbs/s-passive and choosing/s-passive-vs-bli-passive.

The sign-off: Med vennlig hilsen

Formal emails close with Med vennlig hilsen ("With kind regards"), very commonly abbreviated mvh in slightly less formal or internal mail. Then your full name on the next line. Note the conventions:

• Med vennlig hilsen — the standard formal closing. Spell it out in a real complaint or job-related email.
• mvh (lowercase) — a common abbreviation; fine in routine professional email, a little casual for a first formal contact.
• Vennlig hilsen (without Med) — also seen, marginally less formal.
• Med hilsen — neutral, slightly more clipped.

There is no comma rule to worry about and no equivalent of stacking "Yours sincerely / Yours faithfully" by whether you named the recipient — Norwegian uses Med vennlig hilsen across the board.

Register breakdown: formal vs informal email

Lay the two side by side and the principle is obvious — same pronoun, different everything-else:

The pronoun row is the punchline: it never changes. See register/formal-written for the full inventory of formal markers, and pragmatics/politeness-strategies for how the hedging works.

Register and usage notes

A few things English speakers should internalise from this text:

1. Don't import English politeness routines. There is no idiomatic Norwegian for "I hope this email finds you well," "Thank you for your time and consideration," or "Please don't hesitate to contact me" rendered word-for-word. The Norwegian equivalent is to be brief and direct: state your business, hedge your request, close with Med vennlig hilsen. Padding sounds odd.
2. Complete sentences are themselves a formality marker. Where an informal email runs on fragments and dashes, a formal one uses full clauses with finite verbs. Writing Lurer på om dere kan… (dropping Jeg) is fine between colleagues but slightly too breezy in a first formal contact, where you keep the subject: Jeg lurer på om dere kan…
3. Vennligst is the closest thing to "please." Norwegian has no everyday standalone "please." In formal requests you can prepend vennligst ("kindly"): Vennligst bekreft mottak ("Kindly confirm receipt"). It is distinctly formal — fine in this register, stiff in a chat to a friend.

The takeaway is the one that runs through all of Norwegian register: formality is lexical and structural, not pronominal. You stay on du, and you climb the formality ladder with heavier words, hedged requests, the passive, and the Med vennlig hilsen frame.